Changing Places

“I make this look GOOD!!!”

FT.com / Columnists / Clive Crook - Orthodox responses to taxing issues
Orthodox responses to taxing issues

By Clive Crook

Barack Obama and John McCain both expect the ailing US economy to work to their advantage in November. Mr Obama promises to make things better. Mr McCain says they will get better by themselves and he will not make them worse in the meantime. These are the customary postures of the two parties. For a fight between an insurgent Democrat and a maverick Republican, the economics in this election is sadly orthodox.

Mr Obama offers the usual Democratic remedies for middle-class anxieties and grievances: new tax breaks and spending programmes, higher taxes for the rich, sabre-rattling on trade, calls for stricter regulation of finance and so forth. Mr McCain, likewise sticking to his party’s script, says that with the economy in a hole, this is no time to be raising anybody’s taxes, restricting trade or doing anything else to get in the way of American enterprise.

Aside from being predictable, the two have something else in common: fiscal myopia. Their tax plans differ in their distributional effects, but less than you might think in overall burden. Mr McCain opposed President George W. Bush’s tax cuts as unfair and inefficient; now he wants to make them permanent. Mr Obama deplores them still, of course, and says he will let them expire – but only for the sliver of the population that earns more than $250,000 (€163,000, £128,000) a year.

Measured against current law (ie, against a baseline that assumes the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule in 2011) and excluding healthcare (which involves some additional tax changes) Mr McCain wants to cut taxes by $3,700bn over the next 10 years. Mr Obama wants to cut them by $2,700bn. That amounts to a 10 per cent cut in revenue for Mr McCain and a 7 per cent cut for Mr Obama. (The estimates are from the non-partisan Tax Policy Centre of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.)

If either man gets his way, the larger part of the Bush tax cuts would thus remain on the books. At the same time, both have ambitious plans for new spending – Mr Obama especially. The budget is in structural deficit and the shortfall is bound to worsen as the cost of the Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare programmes rises. Neither candidate addresses the issue. Politically, they are doubtless correct: voters would rather not think about it….

No One But Us
by Annie Dillard

There is no one but us.
There is no one to send,
Nor a clean hand,
Nor a pure heart
On the face of the earth,
Nor in the earth
But only us,
A generation comforting ourselves
With the notion
That we have come at an awkward time,
That our innocent fathers are all dead –
As if innocence has ever been –
And our children busy and troubled,
And we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,
Having each of us chosen wrongly,
Made a false start, failed,
Yielded to impulse
And the tangled comfort of pleasures,
And grown exhausted,
Unable to seek the thread,
Weak, and involved.
But there is no one but us.
There never has been.

From the book Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard

Via Bob Cesca’s Goddamn Awesome Blog! Go!: McCain Fever!

Maybe McCain vetoed their beer….

Barack won’t veto your beer!

WHOA!!

Mega Vulcanicity: When Volcanoes Spew Lightning

Several days ago, a volcano that had been dormant for 9,000 years near the coast of Chile erupted spectacularly, hurling liquified metals and lightning many miles into the sky. The results, which you see here, are called a “dirty thunderstorm,” and are quite rare. Nobody is certain what causes them, but according to National Geographic it’s believed to be “the result of rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collid[ing] to produce static charges—just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms.”

So Cute!!!! Via Boing Boing….

RoadkillToys.com Designer Plush Toys - Twitch (Raccoon) Plush Toy

Our Squash-plush range looks like roadkill. Feels like roadkill. And tastes like roadkill. But they’re not. They’re plush toys. Very macabre plush toys. It’s the way we make them that makes them seem so real.

The blood and guts and gore are made using the latest high-tech stuffing and plush, to give it quite a realistic squidgy effect. The body and head and legs are made from specially sourced plush material, that gives them that tactile quality of mangy fur. The body is partly stuffed with beads, to give it extra dead weight. And unlike real roadkill it’s something you’ll want to take home and arrange on your bed.

We’ve tried to make Twitch and the rest of his Squash-plush chums as life-like as possible. But at the end of the day he’s only a stuffed toy. All the plush materials and stuffing we’ve used are made from 100% polyester fibres, and are fully compliant with British safety laws.

Twitch’s body is stuffed with a mixture of beads and stuffing. The beads give the Squash-plush teddy a bit of extra weight, so he can lie spreadeagled in his blood and gut-pool. The blood and guts and gore are made using the latest, cutting edge stuffing. It’s a special new micro-bead stuffing that gives the guts and organs a more malleable, tactile effect. It makes it more squidgy. More gross-out. You can disembowel Twitch by pulling the blood and innards through the zips that line both sides of the teddy carcass.

Nice thoughts on creating life versus getting stuff from Christine Kane.

Creating vs. Getting | Christine Kane

The laws of creativity apply to everything - not just to works of art.

The gift of practicing art is that it teaches the creator how to create, and how to be a creator. Over and over again, the artist learns the process of making things - including the obstacles that arise, the futility of forcing the flow, and the joy of allowing inspiration. This practice has been nothing less than revolutionary in my own life.

That’s because I grew up learning more about Getting than I did about Creating. And I’m not alone in that. Most of the life lessons we’ve all learned are about Getting.

We gotta get rich, get approved, get things from people, get a job, get a life, get laid, get publicity, get someone to do something, get approval, get high, get married, get a loan, get good grades, get a clue, get into college, get up, get down, get out.

Get it?

Getting is an epidemic. It makes us grab at life. It takes us out of the present moment. It makes us powerless. It forces us to manipulate our own spirits so that we can manipulate the situation. Getting requires that we use our precious creative power to get, rather than to use it for its primary purpose, which is to Create. When we misuse this power, we become contorted. We block the flow. The focus is on “out there” rather than “in here.”

When we become Creators, we turn the whole thing around. Everything becomes an inside job. We experience true power. We create our lives.

Beltane Fire Festival

A roundup of a few Beltane posts:

Beltane is a cross-quarter day, marking the midpoint in the Sun’s progress between the vernal equinox and summer solstice. Since the Celtic year was based on both lunar and solar cycles, it is possible that the holiday was celebrated on the full moon nearest the midpoint between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice. The astronomical date for this midpoint is closer to May 5 or May 7, but this can vary from year to year.

From The Zoo:

Going A-Maying & Bringing in the May — Merry-making and Nature communion. * Midpoint between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. * In Pagan Rome, Floralia, from April 27-May 3 was the festival of the Flower Goddess Flora and the flowering of Springtime. On May 1, offerings were made to Bona Dea (as Mother Earth), the Lares (household guardian spirits), and Maia (Goddess of Increase) from whom May gets its name. * Roman Catholic traditions of crowning statues of Mary with flowers on May 1 have Roman Pagan roots. * Marks the second half of the Celtic Year; one of the four Celtic Fire Festivals.

From Owl’s Daughter:

Beltane is a reference to ‘Bel-fire’, the fire of the Celtic God of light (Bel, Beli or Belinus). He, in turn, may be traced to the Middle Eastern God Baal.

Whatever you choose to call it, this is our celebration of the approach of Summer, when the breezes are scented and the evenings are getting warm. Today we honor and emulate the divine union of the Lord and Lady! Celebrations include the obvious pleasures of ecstatic coupling, like most all of Nature is doing around us!

We also celebrate symbolically, by weaving a web of life around the Maypole and leaping the Beltane fires for luck. Lilacs and hawthorn can be brought inside on this day, along with flowers of all kinds to represent the fertility of the earth. This is our great festival of love, lust and fertility. This Sabbat honors the great life force in all things. All life forms! All forms of love!

Pew Research Center: Gen Dems: The Party’s Advantage Among Young Voters Widens

Trends in the opinions of America’s youngest voters are often a barometer of shifting political winds. And that appears to be the case in 2008. The current generation of young voters, who came of age during the George W. Bush years, is leading the way in giving the Democrats a wide advantage in party identification, just as the previous generation of young people who grew up in the Reagan years — Generation X — fueled the Republican surge of the mid-1990’s.

In surveys conducted between October 2007 and March 2008, 58% of voters under age 30 identified or leaned toward the Democratic Party, compared with 33% who identified or leaned toward the GOP. The Democratic Party’s current lead in party identification among young voters has more than doubled since the 2004 campaign, from 11 points to 25 points.

In fact, the Democrats’ advantage among the young is now so broad-based that younger men as well as younger women favor the Democrats over the GOP — making their age category the only one in the electorate in which men are significantly more inclined to self-identify as Democrats rather than as Republicans. Use the interactive tool to track generational differences in party affiliation over time.

While more women voters in every age group affiliate with the Democratic Party rather than the GOP, the gap is particularly striking among young women voters; more than twice as many women voters under age 30 identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party as favor the Republican Party (63% vs. 28%).

I feel my Roxie girl starting to slip away from me. Tonight, she couldn’t keep her food down, poor girl. Yet she is still so strong and brave, doesn’t let her pain keep her from being her loving self. So much to learn from her…

We’ll keep her comfortable and let go when it’s time. Brave girl…

from Wikipedia:

Mudita is a Buddhist (Pali and Sanskrit) word meaning rejoicing in others’ good fortune. Mudita is sometimes considered to be the opposite of schadenfreude.

The term mudita is usually translated as “sympathetic” or “altruistic” joy, the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being rather than begrudging it. Many Buddhist teachers interpret mudita more broadly as referring to an inner spring of infinite joy that is available to everyone at all times, regardless of circumstances. The more deeply one drinks of this spring, the more secure one becomes in one’s own abundant happiness, and the easier it then becomes to relish the joy of other people as well.

The traditional example of the mind-state of mudita is the attitude of a parent observing a growing child’s accomplishments and successes.

Mudita is also traditionally regarded as the most difficult of the brahmaviharas to cultivate. To show mudita is to celebrate happiness and achievement in others even when we are facing tragedy ourselves.

The “far enemies” of mudita are jealousy and envy, two mind-states in obvious opposition. Mudita’s “near enemy,” or quality which superficially resembles mudita but is in fact more subtly in opposition to it, is exhilaration, perceived as a grasping at pleasant experience out of a sense of insufficiency or lack.

Somehow, I am still working on this one. I received some excellent news from a friend this week, and it was a bit hard to just be happy for him. He’s one of those friends who has cut me off to a great extent, though not as completely as others, and sometimes I simply miss those people very much. The saddest part of bipolar is that people are often so unforgiving of things that happened during a manic time, in a way that is hurtful. And even when they do forgive, the closeness that was there is lost and can’t be recovered.

Still, I am happy for my friend and wish him all the best. He has all that I ever wished for him and all that I tried to show him how to attain - so I should simply be pleased with that. But intentions are often misunderstood, especially when they are expressed by someone in a hypomanic state, as I’m sure anyone who has dealt with bipolar disorder knows all too well. Even those fun shopping sprees can have repercussions we don’t expect later on. It’s good to not be in that state anymore!

So while I don’t work to “just be normal” anymore, now I think I work beyond that even, to try to come to a place where I can be glad even for those who do not wish me well. And finding joy even for those who cannot let me be a part of their lives is a difficult, but necessary, step for me.

As if they needed any more excuses for the state of their living quarters…

PureLandMountain.com

The neat room is a dangerous illusion, as history is de facto continuously pointing out to society at large via various financial, political, religious and activist groups of righteous room cleaners and organizers of the human race in general, but we in the developed world never seem to learn, because we insist on trying to get all our kids to clean all their rooms, thereby instilling in them the erroneous belief (as with most beliefs) not only that it should be done, but that it can be done. “A place for everything and everything in its place” is the most inimical and least natural thing I’ve ever heard, it is the seed of tyranny. Il Duce had that embroidered on his underwear. This is where it gets insidious, or is it invidious… My dictionary is around here somewhere… In this corner I think, at the bottom of that stack under the lantern… Used to be with my thesaurus, which because of this pile of hats I just moved to– hey this is interesting, I don’t think I’ve ever read this, didn’t know I had it, it’s in the neopile– discovery is a wonderful thing.

Shelves, for example, and drawers and their desks or whatever, impart the chronic and tragic misapprehension that our own thoughts, hence our creativity, are organized in such a way, when creativity clearly indicates otherwise (as evidenced by its loss through education). This has led for example to all the terrible poetry etc. we’ve had to endure down the ages, in amounts far exceeding the sublime bits that survive less and less each year, that came straight out of one wild room or another, created by the diminishing defenders of domestic wilderness.

Neatness interferes, whereas wilderness prevents senility, ever honing the mind to new sharpness. You think Einstein had a neat mind? DaVinci’s was a mess; Beethoven, forget it. Creativity is anarchic, unpredictable and cannot be summoned, as can the devil of neatness. No discovery in the room, no discovery in the resident. That’s a paraphrase of a Frost quote I’ve got in a book right about there, under the beeswax candles in one of those boxes in the corner, under the sweaters. Being one with the wilderness, like Tarzan or Geronimo, I know where all the vines, hideouts and escape routes are (there’s a river in that direction, there’s a butte over there, a canyon beyond etc.), which is quite enough to be getting on with. One only needs so much knowledge of where key things are; the rest is clutter.

My room has been purposely kept wild because at least some places on earth should be kept free of human interference, maintained as reverential venues where the primordial can still be experienced (such places are disappearing by the day). What greater insight can be gained in this modern world than by daily reminders of our primal origins, leading to fundamental understanding of what is truly possible? A room in its essence is our one clear chance at letting the world run free, insofar as this can be done in an enclosed space for which you’re paying rent, mortgage, maintenance, depreciation or whatever, paid for via time spent in a painfully neat office, so why waste what may be one’s only opportunity to experience the primordial on a regular basis?

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I have never in my entire life noticed what kind of jeans someone is wearing, and anyone whose opinion is worth caring about doesn’t notice or care what kind of jeans you’re wearing, either. If they fit you well and look good, that’s all that really matters. Anything else is just getting you to pay too much for something that isn’t worth it.

Note that this applies to handbags and shoes as well. I really don’t even notice them most of the time. I know as a woman I am supposed to somehow care about this stuff, but — I don’t. I’ve carried the same handbag for three years now and nobody has ever commented on the fact that it’s always the same bag, not even once.

Really — people don’t care about that stuff, unless they are fashion victims. Don’t be one. Your life will instantly become easier, simpler, and much, much less expensive.

Come to think of it, I imagine anyone who associates with Bush and Cheney would develop a layer of poison around them. Probably explains all those clownfish around them.

So my dogs are outside enjoying the sunshine and fresh air while I’m cleaning up the house after my mad weekend alone painting and making collages and listening to loud music and any number of other fun things while the boys were off to visit with his family and go to the Ren Faire in Apache Junction.

And suddenly I had this thought, about the dogs being so comfortable with dirt and mess and never feeling the need to clean any of it up.

The terrible thing about having opposable thumbs and a big brain is this need to constantly use them instead of simply enjoying ourselves.

But then, my kids are comfortable with mess as well, and they have opposable thumbs and big brains, too. I guess I just never guilt tripped them enough into cleaning things up, the way my mom did to me.

Hmmm.

I always cleaned up after the parties I had as a teenager while my parents were away, and never got caught except for the one time they came home and found three hundred beer cans in the storage room, waiting to be recycled.

Yeah, I would’ve felt guilty about not recycling them, too.

Stoopid guilt.

This is one of my early Tao postings, from November 2004.

_______________________________________________________

Beginners acquire new theories and techniques until their minds are cluttered with options.

Advanced students forget their many options. They allow the theories and techniques that they have learned to recede into the background.

Learn to unclutter your mind. Learn to simplify your work.

As you rely less and less on knowing what to do, your work will become more direct and more powerful. You will discover that the quality of your consciousness is more potent than any technique or theory or interpretation.

Learn how fruitful the blocked group or individual suddenly becomes when you give up trying to do just the right thing.

Tao of Leadership

____

I think a lot of people are running around with cluttered minds these days. We worry about what to do about the direction the country has taken, we worry about how best to deal with personal situations in our lives, we worry about work, way too much. Perhaps the way to unclutter our minds is to stop worrying and start taking more direct action. Talk to the people around you, find out their real concerns and help them find some answers. Take your own problems and solve the ones you can, without worrying about whether you are creating the optimum solution. Get out of your head for a while and take a walk somewhere full of nature.

For me, my uncluttering spot is in my garden. I go outside and wander in the garden for a bit, and find myself feeling better about things. No matter what worries and concerns I have, they are small compared to a day full of sunshine and flowers and growing things. It helps living in San Diego where I can almost always count on a beautiful sunny day.

I think Americans really have a disease about getting things right, though. We want to live in the right house, drive the right car, send our kids to the right schools, live the right moral values. Yeah, sure we do. But how many people do you know who are simply happy with their lives? How many don’t worry about having enough money, even though we are among the richest people on the planet? Do you hear many people saying, “I have enough, I think I’ll just relax this year and not work too much?” No, we just go on with our disease, not realizing that if we stopped caring about having the right things and living the right way, our lives would be so much easier and better.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve come to focus on what is left. What’s left of my life, where I would like to go, what I would like to see, how I would like to live. Not what other people think is right, or even what I may think is right, but the things that are left out of most people’s lives. Beauty, simplicity, artful living instead of filling our houses with cheap crap. Time spent learning and growing instead of watching TV or spending yet another day working at jobs we hate to buy more stuff we don’t need. Why can’t America be about spreading fun and laughter instead of spreading war and trying to control everything? We have enough, people. Let’s learn to enjoy it, instead of wanting more. Unclutter our minds, our houses, our lives, and let’s learn to live again. Let’s share a new American dream - one about making life fulfilling again instead of filling our gas tanks, bellies, and houses full of crap.

Nothing is meant to be.
There is no predestination.

In ancient texts, the idea of predestination is very strong, but the usage of the the term is purely metaphorical. People in the past used the word to express feelings of affinity for a place, a time, or for others. But nothing of the future is set.

There is no cosmic puppeteer at work. We are solely responsible for our own actions. It is true that we can become mired in circumstances so strong and so far reaching that they will continue to have ramifications far into the future. For example, if we construct circumstances right, such as starting an organization to help others, then the good will last for a long time. However, if we fall far into debt and do nothing to help ourselves, then the bad will also last a long time. Yet in both cases, our lasting situations are results of our own actions. This is not destiny. It is causality.

Causality is from the past, and nothing is acting from the future. There is no script, no pattern to walk into. Everything has to be created, and we are the artists.

Those who follow Tao endeavor to have as few restrictions placed upon them as possible. By completing each action, they minimize causality. By living fully in the present, they absorb the best of what each day has to offer. By understanding that there is no literal destiny, fate, or predestination, they keep the future as free and open as possible. That is truly the openness of life.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

“The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy,
but the best weapon of a democracy
should be the weapon of openness.”
—Niels Bohr

Show me one who boasts continually of his “openness,” and I will show you one who conceals much.
– Minna Thomas Antrim (1906 - 2001) US writer

We tend to be so bombarded with information. . . This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry. . . . poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.
Rita Dove (1952 - ____) US poet, educator
In “New York Times,” sect. 4, p. 7, 20 Jun 1993.

“The brain’s calculations do not require our conscious effort, only our attention and our openness to let the information through. Although the brain absorbs universes of information, little is admitted into normal consciousness.” — Marilyn Ferguson

“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.” — Joseph Addison

“The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.” (John Steinbeck, Cannery Row)

“Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential. They experience synergy only in small, peripheral ways in their lives. But creative experiences can be produced regularly, consistently, almost daily in people’s lives. It requires enormous personal security and openness and a spirit of adventure.” — Stephen R. Covey

I try to leave my time as open as possible. I guess that seems strange in our society where everything is so scheduled and planned to the last minute of the day. But for me, dropping the dayplanner from my life when I’m not consulting was the best thing for me, so the Covey quote is a bit ironic. . Scheduling is reserved only for the things that have to be organized with other people, and the rest of my time is as free as possible.

The funny thing is, the things you really need to get done are done, and the things you think you need to do but don’t really - get done, too. Somehow, in not scheduling time, there becomes more time, because you aren’t constantly thinking about what you “have” to do, and don’t end up feeling tired and overwhelmed by everything.

I do a lot of my “time management” by ignoring things. My house isn’t alway spotless anymore, but if no one is visiting me, nobody here seems to mind. And when unexpected guests drop in, they are typically more comfortable because they feel “at home”, and not ashamed of how messy their own place is. If I apologize for messiness, the usual reaction is, “you ought to see my place!” I have someone in to deep clean every three weeks or so, and the rest of the time, if the laundry and dishes are done, and the bathroom and kitchen are reasonably clean, we’re doing all right. The best way to keep things clean is to get rid of stuff, so there’s not as much to take care of anyway. We live in a small home and there’s not room for a whole lot of crap to build up. The kids’ rooms are their own, and they are responsible for making sure we can walk through without injury. Beyond that, we just ask them (or bug them) to clean up once in a while.

The garden stays gorgeous because I am in it at least once a day or so, and whenever I see a weed I pull it - without feeling like I need to clean up all the weeds in the yard. When I am in the mood to pull weeds, I do as much as I feel like doing and leave the rest.

I’m not especially concerned about completed action in most cases. I’m pretty good about finishing tasks, but, being a mom, I’m also good about getting interrupted and still remembering what I needed to do. If you don’t handle interruption well (like my husband), then you need to be more concerned about finishing fully. But I think I’m at a place now where this is becoming more important in my life. I need to complete what I am doing or thinking instead of leaving things undone to be finished later.

I don’t believe in predestination, but I do believe in karma. There is cause and effect between what you do, how you treat others, and how life responds to you. People usually think of openness in terms of having nothing to hide from other people. If you think of your life in terms of cause and effect, though, and realize that what you do comes back to you, then you act without intent to harm others, and have nothing to hide. Then you can be open not just with your time, but your feelings as well.

LEAPING LIZARD: The flying dragon can glide for up to 50 meters (164 feet). It jumps from a tree and spreads out folds of skin. These folds act as wings and let the lizard glide through the air.

Yi (pronounced “yee”), is usually translated as Change or changes. Philosophically, it is primordial change, inscribed in the actual order of things, the on-going process of the real or Way. It gives us the seeds and the symbols through which life and spirit can transmit and extend themselves. The meanings of this truly magical name include making a gift, healing a sickness, calming and tranquilizing the spirit, pulling up weeds, cultivating a field. It is the sun appearing after clouds, thanks to the intervention of an ancestor. It is the name of a frontier region, and suggests borderline or liminal states of mind and place. The Chinese character in its various forms contains the graphs for sun and moon and for a lizard or chameleon.

Change is a book you cannot keep at a distance, for
its Way is always shifting.
Transforming and moving, never resting
it flows through the six empty places
like a messenger of life and death
transforming the strong and the supple.

Rules cannot confine this. It follows only Change.
It issues forth and re-enters in a stately dance,
teaching caution within and without,
illuminating the causes of trouble.
It is not an army to protect you,
but a beloved ancestor who draws near.
So follow the words and feel their place in your heart
and you will have charge of the omens and their powerful symbols.
If you are not willing to do this, the Way cannot open for you.

Yi. Change, easy. The symbol for change is a picture of a swiftly moving lizard, the image of change.

Those who follow Tao spend a lifetime studying change.

The ancients observed that all life changed. Grain grew from seeds to tall, full plants. Deer were born in the spring and gradually learned to walk on their own. Human beings grew old and died, yet the generations succeeded one another.

Observing the continual alterations of birth and death, the ancients therefore said Tao had no fixed points; its only constant was change.

When something reaches its extreme, it changes to its opposite. Just after a rice plant reaches a sweet fullness, it begins to yellow, wither, and die. Just as the deer comes to full vitality, it soon becomes old and passes from the earth. And when people reach the apex of their knowledge and strength, they inevitably begin to decline.

Thus it is that Tao is movement, and that movement is marked by constant change.

Deng Ming Dao, Everyday Tao

Last time we got to see leap day, I was going through a period of introspection and silence. It was shortly after that I started actively blogging politically. This time I thought I might at least acknowledge the leap day, since I can and all that.

While I am hopeful that we will soon see major political changes, I know it is still going to be a long hard struggle. Economically the country is in a great deal of trouble, as much as our leaders don’t wish to acknowledge that. To think we can still spend so wastefully on military efforts that are not gaining anything for us is ludicrous. And yet there seems to be no other plan yet to deal with what is looking to be a looming energy crisis, with oil today reaching $103 a barrel.

We must transition to alternatives, we must learn to do more with less, and we must stop the illusion that more and bigger is necessarily “better”. Living large may seem fun, but when I visit the large, mostly empty homes of some people and see how little actual personality or originality there is in their lives, the dearth of books, or ideas, or the lack of any real effort to develop their creativity or even simply think their own thoughts, it makes me very sad. My home is small and not terribly elegant, but my son’s friends are always here, we have great parties here, there are hundreds of books around, music and pets and artwork and a gorgeous garden and lots of creative energy.

The lizard is leaping, change is in the air, and we need to be prepared to change, too.

Sadly, I do not have tortoises (torti?) in my fridge, like Shirley Neely does.

Sigh. My fridge is boring.

Via Neatorama.

On a day when I am not at peace with myself or my surroundings, Ascender comes along and kicks my cage door wide open. I was going to write something about how I am feeling today, but I think I’ll just link to her good wishes instead. Please click on her link below to visit all the bloggers she lists; I don’t have the time to fix all the linky love at the moment here.

Namaste, to all.

Studio Lolo tagged me with this ‘peace and love’ meme; to spread the word to send loving energy and thoughts to the places and people that need it. Rather then tagging others I hope to pass on some urls of my virtual pals who could use some of your loving energy and thoughts. Please leave some virtual peace and love to some people who could really use it right now.

Red Moon at the loss of her daughter

The Daily Warrior successfully fighting ALS for 16 years

Studio Friday is closing down. Stop by and show her some love for her dedication all these years.

Check out these bloggers who address peace and love almost everyday: 3191, a poetic justice, another poster for peace, anti-war us, Art For A Change, Art of Mark Byran, Artists Helping Children, Blog Like You Give A Damn, Blood For Oil, bricalu, Buddha Project, Change Me, Changing Places, Crafty Green Poet, No Blood For War and Profit, Inhabitat, kamurawayan, Light a Candle, Military Families Speak Out, Miniature Gigantic, Paris Parfait, Peaceful Societies, Pinwheels for Peace, Poets Against the War, rambling taoist, smile, smile, Take it Personally, The Peace Train, Treehugger, Visual Resistance, We Are What We Do, Betmo, Bloggers For Peace